Right Concerto, Wrong Name
Mozart’s Piano concerto No. 9, K271
Mozart’s “Jenamy” Concerto was not always known as such. In fact Mozart didn’t attach a name to it at all, but the work has been dubbed the “Jeunehomme” Concerto for a number of years–96, to be exact. 
Thanks to Viennese scholar Michael Lorenz, we now know that “Jeunehomme” (French for “young man”) was incorrectly affixed to the concerto by authors Théodor Wyzewa and Georges de Saint-Foix in a 1912 study of Mozart and his works. These authors implied that Mozart wrote the concerto for a French pianist, Mlle. Jeunehomme. The problem was, no one knew whether the reputed Mlle. Jeunehomme ever existed. In fact, Mozart had become acquainted with a young Austrian woman, Victoire Jenamy, an excellent pianist. In 1778 he wrote a letter to his father mentioning a concerto he had composed “fur die Jenomy,” –later (and possibly purposefully) “Frenchified” by Wyzewa and de Saint-Foix, and then propagated blindly by others, as “Jeunehomme”, with all these writers claiming that Mozart had “Italianized” the true name, or that he was simply a terrible speller! In 2004, after consulting original sources, Lorenz elucidated the identity of the previously mysterious Jeunehomme /Jenamy. And so, enter the Jenamy Concerto. (The original authors are no longer around to complain about disenfranchisement.)
Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat (K271) is one of the “wonders of the world,” according to pianist Alfred Brendel. Obviously the 21-year-old Mozart had composed eight previous concerti, but the first four were transcriptions of keyboard works by other composers, and the next four were far lesser works than K271. This work is Mozart’s break-away piece, his “Eroica” as described by Alfred Einstein.
Madame Jenamy must have been an accomplished pianist, as Mozart wrote for her a grand concerto full of embellishments and cadenzas. A unique feature of the allegro is the startling early entrance of the piano after a one-bar orchestral announcement. Only after the same piano statement is repeated, does the standard orchestral tutti get to take center stage. Mozart never again repeats this amazing scheme in his piano concerti; it is left to Beethoven, and not until his fourth concerto.
The second movement is in the key of C minor, an andantino that can only be described as tragic opera. Through recitative and aria, the soprano pleads, consoles and laments–until the curtain can nearly be heard falling as the last dramatic chords sound.
The rondeau is Mozart unbuttoned – the piano rollicking merrily with not a thought to the orchestra until some thirty bars into the movement. This unbridled gallop is interrupted in the middle by a minuet – bringing the whole thing to a properly civilized pace for a time–until, as it must, the main rondo theme returns at top energy to end with a note of humor–pure Mozart, at his best.
–Teresa Pullara Brandt
[...] April 6 The Mastery and Magic of Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart [...]
Thank you Dr. Brandt for clearing up this
long held “mistake”.
Agnes Selby.